Someday...
by Kelsey
Summary: Consoling Angel about Conner's disappearance, Cordelia thinks.


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Someday...

by

Princess McPhee

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Disclaimer: Not mine. I'm not sure I'd want to own it anymore, what with the way Joss and David are treating their characters.

Author's Note: I couldn't believe what they did to Conner. This season was just incredible, I was totally in love with it, and then they went and let Conner disappear! And Angel would never give up on him this soon! And it's just bothering me incredibly. So please r/r and tell me that you think that too.

Okay, done ranting.

Summary: Consoling Angel over the loss of his son, Cordelia thinks.

Rating: PG-13

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The night is finally quiet, and that means there's time for me. Fred and Gunn are gone, probably making up by some physical means in his god-awful truck somewhere, Groo has left Angel and I to the ritual of the bereaved, Lorne is still on that house-call somewhere, and Angel fell asleep an hour ago. I'm the only one left in this hotel who's aware of anything, and it feels so completely wrong.

It used to be that I'd stay up with Conner at night so that Angel could get some sleep. I'm a night-owl anyway, and I never would have minded, even if midnight wasn't in my nature. Because I would have done anything for that boy. It's incredibly hard to believe he's gone.

I meant it when I told Angel that I couldn't even begin understand what he was going through. But I think I come closer to it than anyone will ever know. Because as much as my feeling for Angel are really screwy right now, my feelings for his son were crystal-clear. Conner was my son, too, and I miss him so much it makes me want to tear my eyes out just so that I don't have to see his empty crib.

I know it's hopeless, but I feel like we should be doing something! This is Angel Investigations, god damn it, and we help the hopeless!

Every option exhausted, he says. Well, it shouldn't be. We do the impossible every day. Last year, Buffy came back from the dead. Last year, Angel stopped an apocalypse and had an epiphany. The souled vampire has _friends_, something in and of itself a thing that shouldn't have happened. Our motto used to be that nothing was hopeless.

And now we've just given up on the cutest little boy that history has ever seen.

I can't believe Wesley did what he did, but I can understand. And unlike the others, who were here to see Angel's heart broken, I can't blame him that much. He's not at fault here, not for doing what he thought was right. But he won't be back, I can tell. No one here would welcome him, and Angel would kill him, damn the consequences.

We really need Buffy. We're always in some kind of a mess, being a demon detective agency, but usually we can handle them. And when we can't, there's always the phone to Sunnydale. The phone to help. 

But Buffy has her own problems right now, and she can't help us. Can't be here to remind Angel that life's worth living, can't come console him over yet another loss in his long life. So I'll have to do it.

He doesn't cry, you know. He doesn't weep, doesn't sob, doesn't even just let the tears run silently down his cheeks. He's quiet and stoic and I know his heart is breaking a little farther with every day that goes by but he's used to it, and that's the scary thing. That he's so used to people leaving him, that he can't even cry over it anymore.

It never gets easier, I'm sure. But a person can condition themselves to anything, and Angel's conditioned himself to losing people he cares about. It's just something that happens, he says. Nothing we can do about it, he's cursed in more ways than one. He's been caught in the curse of love. And every time he dares to love anyone completely and fully, he loses them. And yet, he keeps one loving, because his heart is so full of it that he can't stop, even as much as it hurts him.

I've lost people in my life, too. People I truly cared about. I lost Xander to Willow, who will always hold a little part of his heart, no matter how much they move on. I lost Doyle to the world, lost him because the drunken, half-demon, Irishman was too noble. I think that's an oxymoron, but it just shows how you never know something about a person to be true until they're faced with their final moments.

And now I feel like I'm losing two people I love. Because as much as I know Angel will do his best to pull himself together and get back on his feet, he'll never be the same. He shouldn't be. He lost something incredibly precious to him, and it will change him, for the rest of his unlife.

But he shouldn't have lost it in the first place. There's nothing in this world, as far as we know, that says that a vampire with a soul has to be screwed over at every possible turn, but Angel seems to attract heartache.

He'll deal eventually, but not now. I thought things were going to be okay when he starting taking down the crib, but I realize now that nothing really changed when he took it down. He just hardened his heart and did it because it was what he was supposed to do.

I'm going to have a talk with the Powers That Be Assholes next time I have a chance. And I plan to make one soon. Because if they don't stop fucking with Angel, one day he's going to collapse. And I can't let that happen. I haven't lost many people in my life, and it already fills my heart with aching sometimes. He's lost many more than I have, and he still goes on.

But he's not going to keep going on forever. At some point, he's going to break again, at some point it's going to be too much. And I'm afraid I see it coming.

Because he put Conner's crib back together.

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